“When the sun went down at last, glaring red through the haze of blue, it got almost cold, but they dared not think of lighting a fire, because of the hostile Indians, so they hobbled their nags, ate their supper, and sat huddled up in their blankets beneath the stars till long past twelve. They were listening to Wild Eye’s adventures on the warpath.
“Wild Eye was a border chief, and friendly with the British; in fact, he had been once to Quebec, and so considered himself about half a Christian. Wild Eye was as bald as the back of my watch, and had no more teeth than a tin whistle. He had scars innumerable, only one ear, and about half a nose, for he had been twice put to the torture, and saved as if by a miracle.
“His scalp, he told my grand-dad, hung in many wigwams. The fact is, Wild Eye wore a wig, and when he lost one in warfare, he wore a morsel of buffalo hide until he was able to negotiate with his barber in Ontario. Each wig was paid for not in coin but in land. Each wig cost Wild Eye twenty acres of territory, and they say that the descendants of his barber are millionaires to-day.
“But my grand-dad and his friend fell sound asleep at last, and not even the presence of a grizzly bear, who came round to snuff after the remains of the supper, awoke them until the sun was so high that it nearly hardened the whites of their eyes, as heat does the white of an egg.
“‘I say, John,’ said Tom Turner to my grand-dad, ‘we’ve got five days’ leave. I feel so happy, that I think we ought to make it a fortnight.’
“But grand-dad laughed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that wouldn’t be fair, Tom. Let us stick to our furlough, and be back in five days if we can.’
“About evening on the second day they bade farewell to the rolling prairie, and plunged into a deep ravine, and bivouacked in a pine-clad gorge near the banks of a stream. This river was teeming with fish of the most delicate flavour. They caught enough for supper, and once more settled themselves to listen to the tales of the Indian chief.
“There were strange, unearthly noises in the forest that night which my grand-dad could not Understand—shrieks and yells and awful howlings, but he dozed off at last and dreamt he was head keeper in a kind of pandemonium.
“Next morning sport began in earnest, for they found they were near the head-quarters of the grizzly and wilder cinnamon bear.
“Next to our friend the Arctic Bruin, there is no creature in the world with which a man has less chance in a fair stand-up fight than with the cinnamon. I don’t say, mates, but that any bear will prefer shuffling off to coming to close quarters, but don’t you catch a grizzly or cinnamon unawares behind a rock or a bush. I tell you that the only comfort you can have at that awful moment is the memory that you’ve made your will, and don’t owe your tailor anything to signify.